To Think

I stroke your skin.  I'm not Hamlet.
I'm harmless.  Like the final rest.
Look here, my heart has nails in it.
They stop the bleeding.  Oft I sing
So that I've no time left to think.

Exhibits of Love

Gloved hands probing deepest of wounds,
Valiant hearts and committed minds
Wrestling with death each moonless hour;
The mud-caked faces, bloodied claws,
Of the firemen that dig and scour
Through charred rubble for silent bones;
The voices that uphold such laws
Protecting every assortment known
Of skin or faith, of age or kind;
The truest exhibits of love.

No Simpler

Everything should be made,  
professor Albert Einstein averred,
as simple as possible but
no simpler.

I'm fond of your chubby dimpled chin
Delight in whispers of the scent of your skin
So much is lost in reducing all that's true
to only I love you

Protecting Pain

Her wrinkled ground of psyche bears
the throbbing spoor of savage wills

She seeks to gather fearless strength
and build from hate a bed of spikes

It's not the light but shades she wears
reposing on protecting pain

Her skin was charred and she was shamed 
for all and naught and for her weight

She sighs as though an offshore wind
and arches faced with faceless void

She loathes herself as storm the breeze
and dies at sea as squalls abate

So fear and hate coordinate
in a harrowing harmony

The Little Mermaid

The dripping black descends her back.
The blue lips (painted onyx black)
against her battered knees they rub—
But who is babbling in the tub? 
I don't recall the drowning but 
the ocean raging flaming red.

I hovered high above the flesh. 
The sirens; flash; then silence 'gain.  
That scent of skin, dissected fresh.   
The little mermaid...living dead. 

Feel the Solitude

Whimper, holler, weep; and let burn  
your eyes and turn blood-red. You sob 
at night alone inside your room.... 
There's no moon.  It's long departed 
to watch the lovers nuzzle, kiss, 
by sonorous curves of Fraser. 
Breeze on their skin: a glacier soon 
melting, like their whispers—lover  
to lover, lips to ticklish ears. 

You must feel the solitude's weight:
The haughty air, the empty chair...
Listen!  The walls are crumbling, hushed, 
akin to bones that bound the heart. 
Rotting bones inside the concrete,
marrows of room within a room. 
Sound of your labored panting breath,
the only sign that here resides, 
a living corpse inside this tomb.

Let your shoulders shake and quiver. 
Holding your breath you shiver—There
you hope to keep the throbbing walled
(Oh the illusion of control!)
Loneliness aches; and aching's so 
lonely.  Ache that keeps you closely
dead-awake, and clings to your soul;  
ache and journeys through your body‒
but you it never ever leaves.

Release your breath, forgive your sin,
ease the form, undress the ego,
clear the walls without and within— 
to and from your heart.  Let tears
cleanse you of old and vicious pains, 
polish your senses‒scent of  bread,
taste of coffee, comfort of bed‒   
Let cry, this self, I softly pled: 
I'm drowning in your tears—unshed.

Love, the Things We Labeled Love

We rained above our
melting skin and labeled taste
of salty flesh, love.